Well, did FR pay him for the content? And before you make the attempt: No! Being allowed to post on FR is not “payment”, though some may consider it a supreme honor.

I would not have found that content unless it caught my eye and was of some interest to me on FREEREPUBLIC.COM. I had to generate web traffic on FR just to read the excerpt. After reading the full article, I returned to FR to read the discussion. That’s *more* web traffic for FR. More web-traffic than the blogger’s site received.

FR still “wins” more web-traffic than the blogger even though the post was an excerpt and I followed a link to a blog page.

Do I read FR in some weird way that no-one else does?
- Load FR forum page, browse posts & click interesting article
- FR forum article page loads in a new browser tab
- It’s an excerpt, so I follow the link to full article in a new browser tab
- close blog tab and switch to FR forum article tab for the discussion
- load/reload subsequent FR discussion page(s)
- maybe post comment(s) and reply(s)

So, I gave that blogger (who did all the work composing the article) one page load. How many did I generate on FR? Do you recognize that it was *MORE* than the blogger received?

So, I just don’t get the indignant shouts of “THIEF!” over an excerpted blog post, when the blogger is both providing free content *to* FR AND generating web traffic *for* FR. It seems to me FR comes out better than the blogger in the arrangement - perhaps far better - even though the blogger also benefited from a hit or two.

What am I missing? What am I not seeing that would make this arrangement so offensive? FR gets free content (the hardest part), FR enjoys volunteers working to generate web-traffic for FR and (perhaps best of all from a logistics point of view) FR has a smaller storage requirement with excerpts vs full articles. Seems to me FR would welcome the activity with open arms, if not openly prefer it!

The longer the reply the more the reply is without doubt twisted logic, such as yours.

The fact remains, using FR to increase your blog traffic is blog pimping and theft as you are using another web site (FR) to generate traffic for your own.

FR allows blog postings when they are in line with FR’s own purpose, and that’s just fine, but to excerpt and do other things on FR to drive traffic to your own site is blog pimping. It costs money, my money too, to run FR and to use FR for your own blog purposes is theft.

62 posted on 04/14/2012 3:27:31 PM PDT by CodeToad
(I'm so right-wing if I lifted my left leg I'd go into a spin.)